Similarly, just as military equipment created for the battlefield has
been deployed on American soil against American citizens, we’re about to
see military technology employed here at home in a manner sure to
annihilate what’s left of our privacy and Fourth Amendment rights.

That doesn’t even begin to scrape the surface of what’s coming down the
pike, with law enforcement and military agencies boasting technologies
so advanced as to render everything up until now mere child’s play.

Once these technologies, which used to belong exclusively to the realm
of futuristic sci-fi films, have been unleashed on an unsuspecting
American public, it will completely change the face of American policing
and, in the process, transform the landscape of what we used to call
our freedoms.

It doesn’t even matter that these technologies can be put to beneficial
uses. As we’ve learned the hard way, once the government gets involved,
it’s only a matter of time before the harm outweighs the benefits.

Imagine, if you will, self-guided “smart” bullets
that can track their target as it moves, solar-powered airships that
provide persistent wide-area surveillance and tracking of ground
“targets,” a grenade launcher that can deliver 14 flash-bang grenade rounds, invisible tanks
that can blend into their surroundings and masquerade as a snow bank or
a soccer mom’s station wagon, and a guided mortar weapon that can
target someone up to 12 miles away.

Or what about “less lethal weapons” such as the speech jammer gun, which can render a target tongue-tied; sticky foam guns, which shoot foam that hardens on contact, immobilizing the victim; and shock wave generators, which use the shockwaves from a controlled explosion to knock people over.

Now imagine trying to defend yourself against such devices, which are
incapable of distinguishing between an enemy combatant and a civilian.
For that matter, imagine attempting to defend yourself or your loved
ones against police officers made superhuman thanks to technology that
renders them bullet-proof, shatter-proof, all-seeing, all-knowing and
all-powerful.

Does rendering a government agent superhuman make them inhuman, as
well, unable to relate to the mass of humanity they are sworn to protect
and defend?

When we dress our police officers in camouflage before deploying them
to a peaceful protest, the result will be police who think more like
soldiers. This likely includes heightening their perception of physical
threats, and increasing the likelihood that they react to those threats
with violence. Simply put, dressing police up like soldiers potentially
changes how they see a situation, changing protesters into enemy
combatants, rather than what they are: civilians exercising their
democratic rights…

When police wear soldiers’ clothing, and hold soldiers’ weapons, it
primes them to think and act like soldiers. Furthermore, clothing that
conceals their identity – such as the helmets, gas masks, goggles, body
armor and riot shields that are now standard-issue for officers at
peaceful protests – will increase the likelihood that officers react
aggressively to the situation. As a result of the fact that they are
also dressed like soldiers, they are more likely to interpret the
situation as hostile and will more readily identify violence as the best
solution.

While robocops are problematic enough, the problem we’re facing is so much greater than technology-enhanced domestic soldiers.

As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,
we’re on the cusp of a major paradigm shift from fascism disguised as a
democracy into a technocratic surveillance society in which there are
no citizens, only targets. We’re all targets now, to be scanned,
surveilled, tracked and treated like blips on a screen.

What’s taking place in Maryland right now is a perfect example of this
shift. With Congress’ approval and generous funding (and without the
consensus of area residents), the Army has just launched two massive, billion dollar surveillance airships into the skies over Baltimore,
each airship three times the size of a Goodyear blimp, ostensibly to
defend against cruise missile attacks. Government officials claim the
surveillance blimps, which provide highly detailed radar imaging within a
340-mile radius, are not presently being used to track individuals or
carry out surveillance against citizens, but it’s only a matter of time
before that becomes par for the course.

Stand-off lasers can detect alcohol vapors in a moving car.
“If alcohol vapors are detected in the car, a message with a photo of
the car including its license plate is sent to a police officer waiting
down the road. Then, the police officer stops the car and checks for
signs of alcohol using conventional tests.”

Ekin Patrol cameras,
described as “the first truly intelligent patrol unit in the world,”
can not only detect the speed of passing cars but can generate tickets
instantaneously, recognize and store the license plates of stopped,
moving or parked vehicles, measure traffic density and violation data
and engage in facial recognition of drivers and passengers.

Collectively, all of these gizmos, gadgets and surveillance devices
render us not just suspects in a surveillance state but also inmates in
an electronic concentration camp. As journalist Lynn Stuart Parramore notes:

The Information Age … has turned out rather differently than many
expected. Instead of information made available for us, the key feature
seems to be information collected about us. Rather of granting us
anonymity and privacy with which to explore a world of facts and data,
our own data is relentlessly and continually collected and monitored.
The wondrous things that were supposed to make our lives easier—mobile
devices, gmail, Skype, GPS, and Facebook—have become tools to track us,
for whatever purposes the trackers decide. We have been happily shopping
for the bars to our own prisons, one product at a time.

Unfortunately, eager as we are for progress and ill-suited to consider
the moral and spiritual ramifications of our planned obsolescence, we
have yet to truly fathom what it means to live in an environment in
which we are always on red alert, always under observation, and always
having our actions measured, judged and found wanting under some law or
other intrusive government regulation.

There are those who are not at all worried about this impending future,
certain that they have nothing to hide. Rest assured, soon we will all
have nowhere to hide from the prying eyes of a government bound
and determined to not only know everything about us—where we go, what
we do, what we say, what we read, what we keep in our pockets, how much
money we have on us, how we spend that money, who we know, what we eat
and drink, and where we are at any given moment—but prepared to use that
information against us, whenever it becomes convenient and profitable
to do so.

Making the case that we’re being transformed as citizens, neighbors and human beings, Parramore identifies six factors arising from a society in which surveillance becomes the norm:
a shift in power dynamics, in which the “watcher” becomes all-seeing
and all-powerful; an incentive to turn citizens into outlaws by
criminalizing otherwise lawful activities; diminished citizenship; an
environment of suspicion and paranoia; a divided society comprised of
the watchers and the watched; and “a society of edgy, unhappy beings
whose sense of themselves is chronically diminished.”

As Parramore rightly concludes, this is “not exactly a recipe for Utopia.”

Quotes

"There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach us anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul." Jose Harris

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